


For More Than Just You

by amo-amas-amat (amoama)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amo-amas-amat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seneca Crane: There are consequences.</p>
<p><i>If it had been him in the arena, </i> would he have known they were poisonous without being told?</p>
            </blockquote>





	For More Than Just You

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://lilithilien.insanejournal.com/profile)[**lilithilien**](http://lilithilien.insanejournal.com/) for ~~dragging me over the cliff~~ the beta.  <3

_If it had been him in the arena,_ would he have known they were poisonous without being told? He has never seen any close up before, although they look only a shade darker than the delicate blue kind that arrive in the Capitol in spring, but he knows them from the arena’s vegetation inventory this year.

He’d approved everything. Page 85: Killer plants, seeds and berries. The design team had done a great job this year. Good balance of edible and lethal. He had been happy.

Even though he can’t tell them apart, he knows these aren’t the edible type.

*

“Stop.”

It’s not a big word.

What was it about this year’s Hunger Games? These tributes?

He’s more than smart enough to know there might not have been anything he could have done to prevent this happening.

This one girl who seemed determined to sacrifice her life, for her sister, for her friend, and now for what? So no one wins? Is that the end of hope? He can’t bear to see it when she fights with so much heart. That’s all he thinks. No. And stop.

*

Haymitch stands in front of him. Arguing. Seneca hasn’t seen the drunk this animated in years. It’s not the brilliance of Haymitch’s ideas that Seneca responds to though. It’s his eyes, and the desperation in them, and the faith.

Somewhere along the line, unconventional and unprofessional as it is, Seneca started thinking of the people surrounding the Games as his family. Every year the reunion, same faces, same arguments and tensions, back-biting and gossip, same _characters_ that you make fun of, but somehow love, despite how they ruin every occasion. Like Haymitch. Like Effie. Like Caesar.

“Give them something to root for.” Haymitch says. And if these two have made Haymitch care about them, Seneca supposes they have a fair chance of winning over the districts too.

He nods and orders the announcement.

*

A death means several things. The canon. The projection - scheduled for nightfall if it isn’t dark already. The pick up. The clean up. The analysis of the remaining players, any change of dynamics, movements, alliances, must be accounted for. There is always a moment when the balance of the game is suspended as all the players and Gamemakers adjust. A pause in the dance.

The girl from 12 is playing a different game. The death of the tiny fruit-picker is great television. The camera holds to them steady and unobtrusive as Katniss sings, tears on both their cheeks, and the Mockingjays take up the cry. When eventually they sound the canon Katniss moves away from the body, but not far enough for the clean up to go ahead safely. Seneca has them poised, ready to move in, but he doesn’t do anything to move Katniss on, not yet. It would be too obvious for the audience, it would risk ruining the illusion for them. So he watches the girl collect white flowers and lay them all around her fellow tribute until the girl from 11, Rue, is surrounded by them.

In that moment he knows his mistake; because suddenly, in his own mind, the girl from 11 is no longer a tribute. Instead she is herself worthy of tribute. And that’s not something you can easily pause and adjust to.

*

The tracker jackers weren’t there the night before. And Rue was the other side of the water before a small fire started to the east of her position.

He’s got a solid team. He appreciates that. But also, sometimes, he’s just that good.

*

The fire balls look great. They’re just the velocity he was after as well. The tribute has to be alert and quick on her feet to avoid them. But this tribute is Katniss Everdeen. The girl on fire. So how can the fire balls hurt her? He smiles a little as she tumbles fast down the hill. He has her right where he wants her.

*

He likes her. On television he would call it “pluck” and “spirit”, maybe even “courage”, rather than what it is: rage, bitterness and grim determination. He admires her and he thinks she deserves to be remembered, at least initially. “Eleven” he says as he yanks the arrow from the wall. He takes a bite of the apple and enjoys the open-mouthed stares of his peers.

*

“It’s always interesting to have a volunteer from an out-lying district.”

What more can he say? She made him think, at a time when he’s usually too embroiled in the prep stages to notice, that this is a real girl, with a real life, and something to die for. In that moment watching the Reaping, he thought something he had never truly considered before: _if it had been me whose loved one was chosen, what would I have done?_

He supposes that _is_ pretty interesting. He thinks this one might keep him on his toes.

**

He eats the berries because his life has been lived on the understanding that treason requires a tribute to be appeased and because there is no place for a Head Gamemaker who can no longer stomach the game.

* * *

  



End file.
